Born, at Thornton, 21 April 1816. Early life spent at Haworth. At school at Cowan’s Bridge, Sept. 1824 to autumn of 1825. At Miss Wooler’s school at Roehead, Jan. 1831 to 1832. Returned there as a teacher, 29 July 1835 to spring of 1838. Situation as governess in 1839. At home, 1840. Governess, March to Dec. 1841. To school at Brussels with her sister Emily, Feb. 1842. Returned to Haworth, Nov. 1842. Returned to Brussels school as teacher, Jan. 1843. Returned to Haworth, 2 Jan. 1844. Published poems with her sisters, 1846. “Jane Eyre” published 1847. Visits to London: with Emily, June 1848; Nov. 1849 (when she was made acquainted with Thackeray); 1850; 1851; 1853. Married to Arthur Nicholls, 29 June 1854. Visited Ireland with her husband, and returned with him to Haworth. Died there, 31 March 1855. Works: Contrib. to “Poems: by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell,” 1846; “Jane Eyre,” 1847; “Shirley,” 1849; “Villette,” 1853; all under pseudonym of Currer Bell. Posthumous: “The Professor: by Currer Bell,” 1857; “Emma” (a fragment), pub. in “Cornhill Magazine,” April 1860. She edited (under pseud. of “Currer Bell”) a new edition of “Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey,” with selections and prefaces, 1850. Collected Works with those of her sisters Anne and Emily (7 vols.), 1872–73. Life by Mrs. Gaskell, 4th edn., 1858; by Clement K. Shorter, 1896.

Personal

  I sent a dose of cooling admonition to the poor girl whose flighty letter reached me at Buckland. It was well taken, and she thanked me for it. It seems she is the eldest daughter of a clergyman, has been expensively educated, and is laudably employed as a governess in some private family. About the same time that she wrote to me, her brother wrote to Wordsworth, who was disgusted with the letter, for it contained gross flattery to him, and plenty of abuse of other poets, including me. I think well of the sister from her second letter, and probably she will think kindly of me as long as she lives.

  I think the poems of Currer much better than those of Acton and Ellis, and believe his novel is vastly better than those which they have more recently put forth. I know nothing of the writers, but the common rumour is that they are brothers of the weaving order in some Lancashire town. At first it was generally said that Currer was a lady, and Mayfair circumstantialized by making her the chère amie of Mr. Thackeray. But your skill in “dress” settles the question of sex. I think, however, some women have assisted in the school scenes of “Jane Eyre,” which have a striking air of truthfulness to me—an ignoramus, I allow, on such points.

  Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our names under those of Currer, Acton and Ellis Bell,—the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because—without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called “feminine”—we had a vague impression that authoresses are likely to be looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward a flattery which is not true praise.

  Lewes was describing Currer Bell to me yesterday as a little, plain, provincial, sickly looking old maid. Yet what passion, what fire in her! Quite as much as in George Sand, only the clothing is less voluptuous.

  Between the appearance of “Shirley” and that of “Villette,” she came to me;—in December, 1850. Our intercourse then confirmed my deep impression of her integrity, her noble conscientiousness about her vocation, and her consequent self-reliance in the moral conduct of her life. I saw at the same time tokens of a morbid condition of mind, in one or two directions;—much less than might have been expected, or than would have been seen in almost any one else under circumstances so unfavourable to health of body and mind as those in which she lived; and one fault which I pointed out to her in “Villette” was so clearly traceable to these unwholesome influences that I would fain have been spared a task of criticism which could hardly have been of much use while the circumstances remained unchanged…. She might be weak for once; but her permanent temper was one of humility, candour, integrity and conscientiousness. She was not only unspoiled by her sudden and prodigious fame, but obviously unspoilable.

  Since I saw you I have made three charming trips,—to Wales, Devonshire, and Yorkshire. The last was especially interesting, as I visited Haworth and Bolton Priory. The day was dreary in extreme, with gloomy fog half veiling the mysterious hills, which, resting on their folded arms, bowed solemnly as we swept by. Not a breath of wind was stirring; all was still, as if in sleep. As I stood on the doorstep of the parsonage, and gazed into the narrow garden enclosure, which separates the house from the desolate graveyard, with its green mounds and mossy monuments, it seemed to me that the black gnarled shrubbery, and the dank, brown flower-beds, where the wilted stocks hung heavy with the wet, wonderfully symbolized dear Charlotte Brontë’s sorrows. And seeing the scene in its hour of desolation, it was easy to fancy the sunbursts and wild breezes from the heathery moorland, and the spotless, snowy moonlights.

  Genius as she was, she is beautifully attentive to the smallest practical matters affecting the comforts of others. She is intensely true, and draws from actual life, cost what it may; and in that little remote world of hers—a village, as it seems, of a hundred years back—facts came to light of a frightful, unmitigated force; events accompanied them, burning with a lurid glow and setting their very hearts on fire. She is like her books, and her life explains much in them which needs explanation.

  I remember the trembling little frame, the little hand, the great honest eyes. An impetuous honesty seemed to me to characterize the woman. Twice I recollect she took me to task for what she held to be errors in doctrine. Once about Fielding we had a disputation. She spoke her mind out. She jumped too rapidly to conclusions…. She formed conclusions that might be wrong, and built up whole theories of character upon them. New to the London world, she entered it with an independent, indomitable spirit of her own; and judged of contemporaries, and especially spied out arrogance or affectation, with extraordinary keenness of vision. She was angry with her favourites if their conduct or conversation fell below her ideal. Often she seemed to me to be judging the London folk prematurely: but perhaps the city is rather angry at being judged. I fancied an austere little Joan of Arc marching in upon us, and rebuking our easy lives, our easy morals. She gave me the impression of being a very pure, and lofty, and high-minded person. A great and holy reverence of right and truth seemed to be with her always. Such, in our brief interview, she appeared to me.

  In the sombre web of her existence there shone one thread of silver, all the brighter and more blessed for the contrast—it was the warm, steady, unfailing friendship of her school-fellow “E.” [Ellen Nussey]. “Ma bien aimée, ma précieuse E., mon amie chêre et chérie,” she calls her in one of her earlier letters. “If we had but a cottage and a competency of our own, I do think we might live and love on till death, without being dependent on any third person for happiness.” “What am I compared to you?” she exclaims; “I feel my own utter worthlessness when I make the comparison. I am a very coarse, commonplace wretch.” But the affection that overflowed in such loving extravagance was no passing sentiment. As life deepened and grew more and more intense—and fuller of pain—for each, the closer became their attachment, the more constantly Charlotte turned for sympathy and support to her faithful companion…. In her, indeed, she found all the greater rest and refreshment because of the difference in their natures. Her individuality colors the Caroline Helstone of “Shirley.”

  The garden is less spacious than it was in Charlotte’s time, new classrooms having been added, which cut off something from its length. But the whole place was strangely familiar and pleasant to our eyes. Shut in by surrounding houses, more than one window overlooks its narrow space. Down its length upon one side extends the shaded walk, the “allée défendue,” which Charlotte paced alone so many weary hours, when Emily had returned to England. Parallel to this is the row of giant pear-trees—huge, misshapen, gnarled—that bore no fruit to us but associations vivid as memories. From behind these in the summer twilight the ghost of “Villette” was wont to steal, and buried at the foot of “Methuselah,” the oldest, we knew poor Lucy’s love-letters were hidden to-day. A seat here and there, a few scattered shrubs, evergreen, laurel, and yew, scant blossoms, paths damp, green-crusted—that was all. Not a cheerful place at its brightest; not a sunny spot associated in one’s mind with summer and girlish voices.

  By her life, even more than by her labours the author of “Jane Eyre” must always teach us the lessons of courage, self-sacrifice and patient endurance of which our poor humanity stands in such pressing and constant need.

  Those who would understand Charlotte, even more than those who would understand Emily, should study the difference of tenderness between the touch that drew Shirley Keeldar and the touch that drew Lucy Snowe. This latter figure, as Mr. Wemyss Reid has observed with indisputable accuracy of insight, was doubtless, if never meant to win liking or made to find favor in the general reader’s eyes, yet none the less evidently on that account the faithful likeness of Charlotte Brontë, studied from the life, and painted by her own hand with the sharp austere precision of a photograph rather than a portrait. But it is herself with the consolation and support of her genius withdrawn, with the strength of the spiritual arm immeasurably shortened, the cunning of the right hand comparatively cancelled; and this it is that makes the main undertone and ultimate result of the book somewhat mournfuller even than the literal record of her mournful and glorious life.

  Some American tourists had before called to look at the garden, but the family are not pleased by the notoriety with which Miss Brontë has invested it. However, Mademoiselle Héger kindly offered to conduct us over any portion of the establishment we might care to see, and led the way along the corridor, past the classrooms and the réfectoire on the right, to the narrow, high-walled garden. We found it smaller than in the time when Miss Brontë loitered here in weariness and solitude. Mademoiselle Héger explained that, while the width remains the same, the erection of the classrooms for the day-pupils has diminished the length by some yards. Tall houses surround and shut it in on either side, making it close and sombre, and the noises of the great city all about it penetrate here only as a far-away murmur. There is a plat of verdant turf in the centre, bordered by scant flowers and damp gravelled walks, along which shrubs of evergreen and laurel are irregularly disposed. A few seats are placed here and there within the shade, where, as in Miss Brontë’s time, the externats eat the luncheon brought with them to the school; and overlooking it all stand the great old pear-trees, whose gnarled and deformed trunks are relics of the time of the hospital and convent.

  The loving admirers of Charlotte Brontë can never feel much enthusiasm for Mr. Nicholls. Mrs. Gaskell states that he was not attracted by her literary fame, but was rather repelled by it; he appears to have used her up remorselessly, in their short married life, in the routine drudgery of parish work. She did not complain, on the contrary, she seemed more than contented to sacrifice everything for him and his work; but she remarks in one of her letters, “I have less time for thinking.” Apparently she had none for writing. Surely the husband of a Charlotte Brontë, just as much as the wife of a Wordsworth or a Tennyson, ought to be attracted by literary fame. To be the life partner of one to whom the most precious of Nature’s gifts is confided, and to be unappreciative of it and even repelled by it, shows a littleness of nature and essential meanness of soul. A true wife or husband of one of these gifted beings should rather regard herself or himself as responsible to the world for making the conditions of the daily life of their distinguished partners favourable to the development of their genius. But pearls have before now been cast before swine, and one cannot but regret that Charlotte Brontë was married to a man who did not value her place in literature as he ought.

  It almost makes one’s blood boil to think of that warm, imaginative, hungry and thirsty girlish heart, beating against its bars, under-rated and misunderstood by the sprightly, amiable, but withal undiscerning and self-opinionated man who was its ideal…. He is a bright, vain, handsome octogenarian, charming and delighting to charm, eager to talk, and as eager for an audience, as exacting of homage and subservience as in the days when schoolgirls trembled at his glance. Imagine him fifty years ago, and you can hardly go wrong in imaging a very fascinating personage; then recollect that fifty years ago or thereabouts the little Yorkshire nursery-governess took her first flight to Brussels, and there beheld “Paul Emanuel”—et voilà tout!

  One of the most notable persons who ever came into our old bow-windowed drawing-room in Young street is a guest never to be forgotten by me, a tiny, delicate, little person, whose small hand nevertheless grasped a mighty lever which set all the literary world of that day vibrating. I can still see the scene plainly!—the hot summer evening, the open windows, the carriage driving to the door as we all sat silent and expectant; my father, who rarely waited, waiting with us; our governess and my sister and I all in a row, and prepared for the great event. We saw the carriage stop and out of it sprang the active, well-knit figure of young Mr. George Smith, who was bringing Miss Brontë to see our father. My father, who had been walking up and down the room, goes out into the hall to meet his guests, and then after a moment’s delay the door opens wide, and the two gentlemen come in, leading a tiny, delicate, serious, little lady, pale, with fair, straight hair, and steady eyes. She may be a little over thirty; she is dressed in a little barége dress with a pattern of faint green moss. She enters in mittens, in silence, in seriousness; our hearts are beating with wild excitement.

  Story-telling, as we shall see, was a hereditary gift in the Brontë family, and Patrick inherited it from his father. Charlotte’s friend, Miss Ellen Nussey, has often told me of the marvellous fascination with which the girls would hang on their father’s lips as he depicted scene after scene of some tragic story in glowing words and with harrowing details. The breakfast would remain untouched till the story had passed the crisis, and sometimes the narration became so real and vivid and intense, that the listeners begged the vicar to proceed no farther. Sleepless nights succeeded story-telling evenings at the vicarage.

  Taken as a whole, the life of Charlotte Brontë was among the saddest in literature. At a miserable school, where she herself was unhappy, she saw her two elder sisters stricken down and carried home to die. In her home was the narrowest poverty. She had, in the years when that was most essential, no mother’s care; and perhaps there was a somewhat too rigid disciplinarian in the aunt who took the mother’s place. Her second school brought her, indeed, two kind friends; but her shyness made that school-life in itself a prolonged tragedy. Of the two experiences as a private governess I shall have more to say. They were periods of torture to her sensitive nature. The ambition of the three girls to start a school on their own account failed ignominiously. The suppressed vitality of childhood and early womanhood made Charlotte unable to enter with sympathy and toleration into the life of a foreign city, and Brussels was for her a further disaster. Then within two years, just as literary fame was bringing its consolation for the trials of the past, she saw her two beloved sisters taken from her. And, finally, when at last a good man won her love, there were left to her only nine months of happy married life. “I am not going to die. We have been so happy.” These words to her husband on her death-bed are not the least piteously sad in her tragic story.

  I must confess that my first impression of Charlotte Brontë’s personal appearance was that it was interesting rather than attractive. She was very small, and had a quaint old-fashioned look. Her head seemed too large for her body. She had fine eyes, but her face was marred by the shape of the mouth and by the complexion. There was but little feminine charm about her; and of this fact she herself was uneasily and perpetually conscious. It may seem strange that the possession of genius did not lift her above the weakness of an excessive anxiety about her personal appearance. But I believe that she would have given all her genius and her fame to have been beautiful. Perhaps few women ever existed more anxious to be pretty than she, or more angrily conscious of the circumstance that she was not pretty…. Her letters show that she enjoyed the recollection of these visits, and the society at our house; but my mother and sisters found her a somewhat difficult guest, and I am afraid she was never perfectly at her ease with them. Strangers used to say that they were afraid of her. She was very quiet and self-absorbed, and gave the impression that she was always engaged in observing and analyzing the people she met. She was sometimes tempted to confide her analysis to the victim.

The Professor

  Charlotte Brontë wrote “The Professor” long before “George Eliot” took up her pen; and she must at least receive credit for having been in the field as a reformer of fiction before her fellow-labourer was heard of. She was true to the conditions she had laid down for herself in writing “The Professor.” Nothing more sober and matter-of-fact than that story is to be found in English literature. And yet, though the landscape one is invited to view is but a vast plain, without even a hillock to give variety to the prospect, it has beauties of its own which commend it to our admiration…. Though a sad, monotonous book, has life and hope, and a fair faith in the ultimate blessedness of all sorrowful ones, shining through all its pages; and it closes in a scene of rest and peace.

  Even the wise and cordial judgment which had discerned the note of power and sincerity perceptible in the crude coarse outlines of “The Professor” may well have been startled and shaken out of all judicial balance and critical reserve at sight of the sudden sunrise which followed so fast on that diffident uncertain dawn.

  It has an interest, particularly as showing the restricted nature of its author’s invention, but as a story it is ineffective and unpleasant.

Jane Eyre, 1847

  I now send you per rail a MS. entitled, “Jane Eyre,” a novel in three volumes, by Currer Bell. I find I cannot prepay the carriage of the parcel, as money for that purpose is not received at the small station-house where it is left. If, when you acknowledge the receipt of the MS., you would have the goodness to mention the amount charged on delivery, I will immediately transmit it in postage-stamps. It is better in future to address Mr. Currer Bell, under cover to “Miss Brontë, Haworth, Bradford, Yorkshire,” as there is a risk of letters otherwise directed not reaching me at present. To save trouble, I enclose an envelope.

  I have finished the adventures of Miss Jane Eyre, and think her far the cleverest that has written since Austen and Edgeworth were in their prime. Worth fifty Trollopes and Martineaus rolled into one counterpane, with fifty Dickenses and Bulwers to keep them company—but rather a brazen Miss.

  We have said that this was a picture of a natural heart. This, to our view, is the great and crying mischief of the book. Jane Eyre is throughout the personification of an unregenerate and undisciplined spirit, the more dangerous to exhibit from that prestige of principle and self-control which is liable to dazzle the eye too much for it to observe the inefficient and unsound foundation on which it rests. It is true Jane does right, and exerts great moral strength, but it is the strength of a mere heathen mind which is a law unto itself. No Christian grace is perceptible upon her. She has inherited in fullest measure the worst sin of our fallen nature—the sin of pride. Jane Eyre is proud, and therefore she is ungrateful too. It pleased God to make her an orphan, friendless, and penniless—yet she thanks nobody, and least of all Him, for the food and raiment, the friends, companions, and instructors of her helpless youth—for the care and education vouchsafed to her till she was capable in mind as fitted in years to provide for herself…. Altogether the autobiography of Jane Eyre is pre-eminently an anti-Christian composition. There is throughout it a murmuring against the comforts of the rich and against the privations of the poor, which, as far as each individual is concerned, is a murmuring against God’s appointment—there is a proud and perpetual assertion of the rights of man, for which we find no authority either in God’s word or in God’s providence—there is that pervading tone of ungodly discontent which is at once the most prominent and the most subtle evil which the law and the pulpit, which all civilized society in fact has at the present day to contend with. We do not hesitate to say that the tone of mind and thought which has overthrown authority and violated every code human and divine abroad, and fostered Chartism and rebellion at home, is the same which has also written Jane Eyre…. If we ascribe the book to a woman at all, we have no alternative but to ascribe it to one who has, for some sufficient reason, long forfeited the society of her own sex.

  I have read “Jane Eyre,” and shall be glad to know what you admire in it. All self-sacrifice is good, but one would like it to be in a somewhat nobler cause than that of a diabolical law which chains a man soul and body to a putrefying carcass. However, the book is interesting; only I wish the characters would talk a little less like the heroes and heroines of police reports.

  Not many months ago, the New England States were visited by a distressing mental epidemic, passing under the name of the “Jane Eyre fever,” which defied all the usual nostrums of the established doctors of criticism. Its effects varied with different constitutions, in some producing a soft ethical sentimentality, which relaxed all the fibres of conscience, and in others exciting a general fever of moral and religious indignation. It was to no purpose that the public were solemnly assured, through the intelligent press, that the malady was not likely to have any permanent effect either on the intellectual or moral constitution. The book which caused the distemper would probably have been inoffensive, had not some sly manufacturer of mischief hinted that it was a volume which no respectable man should bring into his family circle. Of course, every family soon had a copy of it, and one edition after another found eager purchasers.

  We take Currer Bell to be one of the most remarkable of female writers; and believe it is now scarcely a secret that Currer Bell is the pseudonyme of a woman. An eminent contemporary, indeed, has employed the sharp vivacity of a female pen to prove “upon irresistible evidence” that “Jane Eyre” must be the work of a man! But all that “irresistible evidence” is set aside by the simple fact that Currer Bell is a woman. We never, for our own parts, had a moment’s doubt on the subject. That Jane herself was drawn by a woman’s delicate hand, and that Rochester equally betrayed the sex of the artist, was to our minds so obvious, as absolutely to shut our ears to all the evidence which could be adducted by the erudition even of a marchande des modes; and that simply because we know that there were women profoundly ignorant of the mysteries of the toilette, and the terminology of fashion (independent of the obvious solution, that such ignorance might be counterfeited, to mislead), and felt that there was no man who could so have delineated a woman—or would so have delineated a man. The fair and ingenious critic was misled by her own acuteness in the perception of details; and misled also in some other way, and more uncharitably, in concluding that the author of “Jane Eyre” was a heathen educated among heathens—the fact being, that the authoress is the daughter of a clergyman! This question of authorship, which was somewhat hotly debated a little while ago, helped to keep up the excitement about “Jane Eyre;” but, independently of that title to notoriety, it is certain that, for many years, there had been no work of such power, piquancy, and originality. Its very faults were faults on the side of vigour; and its beauties were all original. The grand secret of its success, however,—as of all genuine and lasting success,—was its reality. From out of the depths of a sorrowing experience, here was a voice speaking to the experience of thousands. The aspects of external nature, too, were painted with equal fidelity,—the long cheerless winter days, chilled with rolling mists occasionally gathering into the strength of rains,—the bright spring mornings,—the clear solemn nights,—were all painted to your soul as well as to your eye, by a pencil dipped into a soul’s experience for its colours. Faults enough the book has undoubtedly; faults of conception, faults of taste, faults of ignorance, but in spite of all, it remains a book of singular fascination. A more masculine book, in the sense of vigour, was never written. Indeed that vigour often amounts to coarseness,—and is certainly the very antipode to “lady like.”

  “Jane Eyre” is the real spar—the slow deposit which the heart of genius filters from the daily stream of time and circumstance. “Shirley” is its companion, made to order, fair to look upon, but lacking the internal crystal. Open the earlier work where you will, this crystal sparkles in your eyes; break it up piecemeal, and every fragment glitters. Turn over the first chapter, and pause at hazard. There is no apparent consciousness of wisdom—no parading of truths or setting forth of paradoxes—no dealing in aphorisms, axioms, or generals of any kind. Yet one could preach a sermon from every sentence.

  How well I remember the delight, and wonder, and pleasure with which I read “Jane Eyre” sent to me by an author whose name and sex were then alike unknown to me; the strange fascinations of the book; and how with my own work pressing upon me, I could not, having taken the volumes up, lay them down until they were read through!

  I have been reading novels—“Jane Eyre,” among the rest. It was very pleasant to me for its inexperience. It is a girl’s dream of the world not yet known, or only glimpsed from afar. But there is a real power in it, and the descriptions of scenery are the best I know, out of Ruskin.

  Those who remember that winter of nine-and-twenty years ago know how something like a “Jane Eyre” fever raged among us. The story which had suddenly discovered a glory in uncomeliness, a grandeur in overmastering passion, moulded the fashion of the hour, and “Rochester airs” and “Jane Eyre graces” became the rage. The book, and its fame and influence, travelled beyond the seas with a speed which in those days was marvellous. In sedate New England homes the history of the English governess was read with an avidity which was not surpassed in London itself, and within a few months of the publication of the novel it was famous throughout two continents. No such triumph has been achieved in our time by any other English author; nor can it be said, upon the whole, that many triumphs have been better merited. It happened that this anonymous story, bearing the unmistakable marks of an unpracticed hand, was put before the world at the very moment when another great masterpiece of fiction was just beginning to gain the ear of the English public. But at the moment of publication “Jane Eyre” swept past “Vanity Fair” with a marvellous and impetuous speed which left Thackeray’s work in the distant background; and its unknown author in a few weeks gained a wider reputation than that which one of the master minds of the century had been engaged for long years in building up. The reaction from this exaggerated fame, of course set in, and it was sharp and severe.

  The gift of which I would speak is that of a power to make us feel in every nerve, at every step forward which our imagination is compelled to take under the guidance of another’s, that thus and not otherwise, but in all things altogether even as we are told and shown, it was and it must have been with the human figures set before us in their action and their suffering; that thus and not otherwise they absolutely must and would have felt and thought and spoken under the proposed conditions. It is something for a writer to have achieved if he has made it worth our fancy’s while to consider by the light of imaginative reason whether the creatures of his own fancy would in actual fact and life have done as he has made them or not; it is something, and by comparison it is much. But no definite terms of comparison will suffice to express how much more than this it is to have done what the youngest of capable readers must feel on their first opening “Jane Eyre” that the writer of its very first pages has shown herself competent to do. In almost all other great works of its kind, in almost all the sovereign masterpieces even of Fielding, of Thackeray, of the royal and imperial master, Sir Walter Scott himself—to whose glorious memory I need offer no apology for the attribution of epithets which I cannot but regret to remember that even in their vulgar sense he would not have regarded as other than terms of honour—even in the best and greatest works of these our best and greatest we do not find this one great good quality so innate, so immanent as in hers.

  The story of Charlotte Brontë’s life is one of the most fascinating in our language. The English reading world is acquainted with her novels, and many have enjoyed “Jane Eyre” as much perhaps as did a mother of several grown-up daughters who took the book from one of them with a reproof for reading a novel—something she had never done, and who was discovered in the night poring over it. She had opened it to see what it was, and had remained up all night to settle the question for herself.

  I hope I shall not be called a Puritan or a Philistine if I say that the morality of Charlotte Brontë’s work always strikes me as being radically unhealthy. The ethical quality of the productions of any novelist whose experience of life was so narrow and so painful as hers must be either morbidness or weakness; and it is hard to see how “Jane Eyre” can be considered anything but morbid in spite of its singular power. The objection to its whole conception is that the abnormal is treated as if it were the normal, and the reader is led to make wide ethical generalizations from a series of really exceptional instances…. In “Jane Eyre” the furnace of emotion is heated seven times more than it is wont to be heated in the healthy life of every day; the atmosphere is that of a Turkish bath, but there is no welcome douche to brace up the relaxed tissues of feeling.

  It is easy to understand the great interest and excitement such a tale at once created. Most books are born dead, and it is always a startling moment when you first discover that you are holding an exception in your hands. “Jane Eyre” was a live coal dropped by some unknown hand—from some unknown quarter—amongst the literary coteries and “log-rollers.” There was no mistake about it, here was a book at first hand.

  Not long after, “Consuelo,” in Mr. Shaw’s admirable translation, took possession of Young America. The fame of it hardly exists now. But there must be something real in it to account for the hold it took, and the impulse it gave. I can remember that again and again I threw it down to go to work, with a feeling which, if expressed in words, would have been, “Will you waste your time in reading a French novel, when a woman like this can write a book like this?” But when “Jane Eyre” came, nobody threw that down till he had finished it.

  Miss Brontë’s novels are day-dreams and memories rather than stories. In “Jane Eyre” she is dealing with the eternal day-dream of the disinherited; the unfortunate guest at life’s banquet. It is a vision that has many shapes: some see it in the form of a buried treasure to make them suddenly wealthy—this was the day-dream of Poe; or of a mine to be discovered, a company to be formed—thus it haunted Balzac. The lodging-house servant straight of foundlings dreams, and behold she is a young countess, changed at nurse and kept out of her own. The poor author dreams of a “hit,” and (in this novel) Miss Brontë dwelt in fantasy on the love and the adventures that might come to a clever governess, who was not beautiful…. “Jane Eyre” is her best story, and far the most secure of life, because it has plenty of good, old-fashioned, foolish, immortal romance.

  In the first place she was known to Mr. Rochester and to Currer Bell herself, as she is known in England to-day, as Jane Air, not as Jane Ire; and in the second place she is not autobiographical, Mr. Birrell to the contrary, notwithstanding…. It is difficult, even in these days of Anna Karenina and of Robert Elsmere, to understand the sensation created by Jane Eyre when she first appeared, over forty years ago. She was read and re-read, discussed and dissected, anatomized and anathematized, on both sides of the Atlantic, as no ideal woman has been treated before or since; and she achieved at once a triumphant notoriety which has never been equalled in simple fiction…. She has outlived censure, and she needs no praise. Time has granted her a patent of nobility. To those who remember her in her youth she has lost none of her charms. Those who now meet her for the first time in her matronly maturity will find much to admire in her and very little to reprehend.

  To say that we little girls had been given “Jane Eyre” to read scarcely represents the facts of the case; to say that we had taken it out without leave, read bits here and read bits there, been carried away by an undreamed-of and hitherto unimagined whirlwind into things, times, places, all utterly absorbing and at the same time absolutely unintelligible to us, would more accurately describe our states of mind on that summer’s evening as we look at Jane Eyre—the great Jane Eyre—the tiny little lady.

  I do not think that she was exactly what can be called a great genius, or that she would ever have given us anything much better than she did give; and I do not think that with critical reading “Jane Eyre” improves, or even holds its ground very well. It has strength, or at any rate force; it has sufficient originality of manner; it has some direct observation of life within the due limits of art; and it has the piquancy of an unfashionable unconventionally at a very conventional time. These are good things, but they are not necessarily great; and it is to me a very suspicious point that quite the best parts of Charlotte Brontë’s work are admittedly something like transcripts of her personal experience.

  Of Charlotte’s work it is “Jane Eyre” only that can be called a masterpiece…. With all its faults, its narrowness of range, its occasional extravagances, “Jane Eyre” will long be remembered as one of the most creative influences of the Victorian literature, one of the most poetic pieces of English romance, and among the most vivid masterpieces in the rare order of literary “Confessions.”

  In 1847 the world was startled by the publication of a story of modern life named “Jane Eyre,” by an anonymous author. Here were a sweep of tragic passion, a broad delineation of elemental hatred and love, a fusion of romantic intrigue with grave and sinister landscape, such as had never been experienced before; to find their parallel it was necessary to go back to the wild drama of Elizabeth.

  “Jane Eyre” is after all but a glorified example of the “one novel” which everybody is said to “have in him.” It is not quite certain that Charlotte Brontë had any more novels in her as great, or nearly as great, as “Jane Eyre,” at any rate neither “Villette” nor “Shirley” has proved it. But this suspected limitation in her range may not unreasonably be claimed by her admirers as additional testimony to that truth, force, and intensity of this personal and almost autobiographic utterance which has raised it to the rank of a classic.

  There never was a plot which pretended to be a plot, of looser texture than that of “Jane Eyre.” It abounds with absurdities and inconsistencies. The critics of Charlotte Brontë’s time had no difficulty in pointing them out; they lie, indeed, on the surface for all to see…. The main secret of the charm that clings to Charlotte Brontë’s books is, and will always be, the contact which they give us with her own fresh, indomitable, surprising personality,—surprising, above all. In spite of its conventionalities of scheme, “Jane Eyre” has, in detail, in conversation, in the painting of character, that perpetual magic of the unexpected which overrides a thousand faults, and keeps the mood of the reader happy and alert. The expedients of the plot may irritate or chill the artistic sense; the voice of the story-teller, in its inflections of passion, or feeling, or reverie, charms and holds the ear almost from first to last. The general plan may be commonplace, the ideas even of no great profundity; but the book is original.

  A study of Charlotte Brontë’s novels suggests the judgment that while in all of them there is much that is of high value and interest, there is only one part of one of them that leaves the distinct impression of unmistakable greatness, namely, the relation between Rochester and Jane Eyre. This may seem a small achievement on which to base security of fame, but it is not to be measured by the number of pages in which it is contained. It struck a new note in the history of fiction—a note which has added many grand and subtle harmonies to itself in the works of succeeding writers, and the sweetness and power of which will never die away.

  The characters are creations, and their appearance marks an epoch in literature, marks a distinct and definite era in the history of the novel. Before their appearance we had had personages in fiction. In “Jane Eyre,” for the first time in English fiction, the intensity of life-craving which dominates a woman who loves is presented in the pages of the novel; and the voice of the outcry of her longing comes to the world.

  The MS. of “Jane Eyre” was read by Mr. Williams in due course. He brought it to me on a Saturday, and said that he would like me to read it. There were no Saturday half-holidays in those days, and, as usual, I did not reach home until late. I had made an appointment with a friend for Sunday morning; I was to meet him about twelve o’clock, at a place some two or three miles from our house and ride with him into the country. After breakfast on Sunday morning I took the MS. of “Jane Eyre” to my little study, and began to read it. The story quickly took me captive. Before twelve o’clock my horse came to the door, but I could not put the book down. I scribbled two or three lines to my friend, saying I was very sorry circumstances had arisen to prevent my meeting him, sent the note off by my groom, and went on reading the MS. Presently the servant came to tell me that luncheon was ready; I asked him to bring me a sandwich and a glass of wine, and still went on with “Jane Eyre.” Dinner came; for me the meal was a very hasty one, and before I went to bed that night I had finished reading the manuscript. The next day we wrote to “Currer Bell” accepting the book for publication.

  From the beginning to the ending of her story, Jane Eyre moves a living and consistent soul; from the child we know grow the girl and woman we know, vivid, energetic, passionate, as well as good, conscientious, devoted. It was a figure which might have well astonished and alarmed the little fastidious world of fifty years ago, far more smug and complacent than the larger world of to-day, and far more intolerant of any question of religious or social convention; and it is no wonder that the young author should have been attainted of immorality and infidelity, not to name that blacker crime, impropriety. In fact, it must be allowed that “Jane Eyre” does go rather far in a region where women’s imaginations are politely supposed not to wander; and the frank recognition of the rights of love as love, and its claims in Rochester as paramount to those of righteous self-will in St. John, is still a little startling…. The whole story, so deeply of nature, is steeped in the supernatural; and just as paradoxically the character of Jane Eyre lacks that final projection from the author which is the supreme effect of art, only because she feels it so intensely that she cannot detach it from herself.

Shirley, 1849

  I have read “Shirley” lately; it is not equal to “Jane Eyre” in spontaneousness and earnestness. I found it heavy, I confess, though in the mechanical part of the writing—the compositional savoir faire—there is an advance.

  “Shirley” is a Holiday of the Heart. It is glad, buoyant, sunshiny. The imagination is liberated, and revels in its liberty. It is the pleasant summer-time, and the worker is idling among the hills. The world of toil and suffering lies behind, but ever so far away. True, it must again be encountered, its problems resolved, its sores probed; the hard and obstinate war again waged manfully; but in the meantime the burn foams and sparkles through the glen; there is sunshine among the purple harebells; and the leaves in the birken glade dance merrily in the summer wind.

  “Shirley” disgusted me at the opening, and I gave up the writer and her books with a notion that she was a person who liked coarseness. How I misjudged her! and how thankful I am that I never put a word of my misconceptions into print, or recorded my misjudgments of one who is a whole heaven above me.

  It is what we should describe as a novel good “all round.” It has no weak side; it is the most perfect piece of writing the author has left behind her. There is not the terrible sweep of passion we see in “Jane Eyre;” the roughnesses of life are smoothed down a little, and it seems altogether more humanized and humanizing.

  “Shirley” has, and deserves to have, many friends, and contains passages of great daring and beauty; but, as a whole, it must be pronounced (by me) inferior alike to its predecessor, and its successor. It lacks the splendid unity of “Jane Eyre,” the uniqueness of “Villette.” It is a series of portraits and exteriors—all good, some superb; but to pursue the metaphor, one walks through a book as through a picture gallery, always ready to go on, but never averse to turn back, since continuity of impression is of necessity impossible.

  The heroine is Emily Brontë, as she might have been if the great god, Wünsch, who inspires day-dreamers, had given her wealth and health. One might as readily fancy the fortunes of a stormy sea-petrel in a parrot’s gilded cage. “Shirley” cannot live with “Jane Eyre.”

  Her second book, “Shirley” (1848), was less powerful than her first, and much more artificial. It showed perhaps something of the strain the writer put on her mettle, and fully bent on exceeding, if possible, the previous natural and spontaneous effort. But it was also revolutionary to the highest degree, casting aside the discreet veil of the heroine which almost all previous novelists had respected, and representing the maiden on the tip-toe of expectation, no longer modestly awaiting the coming of Prince Charming, but craning her neck out of every window in almost fierce anticipation, and upbraiding heaven and earth, which kept her buried in those solitudes, out of his way.

Villette, 1853

  I am only just returned to a sense of the real world about me, for I have been reading “Villette,” a still more wonderful book than “Jane Eyre.” There is something almost preternatural in its power.

  The most striking book which has been recently published here is “Villette,” by the authoress of “Jane Eyre,” who, as you know, is a Miss Brontë. The book does not give one the most pleasing notion of the authoress, perhaps, but it is very clever, graphic, vigorous. It is “man’s meat,” and not the whipped syllabub, which is all froth, without any jam at the bottom.

  Takes rank at once with “Jane Eyre,” displaying the same vigour—the same exuberant power—the same bold outline—the same dramatic conception—and the same invincible mastery and fusion of elements usually considered repugnant to romance.

  Have you all read “Villette”? and do you not admire the book, and own it as one of the great books of the time? I confess that I have seldom been more impressed with the genius of the writer, and seldom less drawn to her personally. She has nerves of such delicate fineness of edge that the least touch turns them, or she has had an exasperating experience. Whether she calls herself Jane Eyre, or Lucy Snowe, it does not matter—it is Miss Brontë. She has the intensity of Byron—of our own Fanny Kemble. She unconsciously infuses herself into her heroine. It is an egotism whose fires are fed by the inferior vitality of others; and how well she conceives others! how she daguerreotypes them!

  One or two of the dramatis personæ evoke sentiments of approval on account of their originality, conspicuous amongst them being Mr. Paul Emanuel and Miss de Bassompierre; but on the whole the book is disappointing, for there is no one character whose fortunes we are anxious to follow; and a novel which fails to beget a personal interest must be said to have lost its chief charm.

  Something has already been said of the true character of that marvellous book, in which her own deepest experiences and ripest wisdom are given to the world. Of the manner in which it was written her readers know nothing. Yet this, the best beloved child of her genius, was brought forth with a travail so bitter that more than once she was tempted to lay aside her pen and hush her voice forever. Every sentence was wrung from her as though it had been a drop of blood, and the book was built up by bit and bit, amid paroxysms of positive anguish, occasioned in part by her own physical weakness and suffering, but still more by the torture through which her mind passed as she depicted scene after scene from the darkest chapter in her own life, for the benefit of those for whom she wrote. It is from her letters at this time also we get the best indications of what she was passing through. Few, perhaps, reading these letters would suppose that their writer was at that very time engaged in the production of a great masterpiece, destined to hold its own among the ripest and finest fruits of English genius.

  The tale deserves the epithet, wonderful. All honour to the author who wielded the magical wand that “evolved” its scenes and incidents; all credit to the critics who celebrated the feat “with one burst of acclamation.” Rut the great world does not care a straw whether a work of fiction is a miracle of evolution or not, but only whether the thing evolved is an interesting novel.

  “Villette” appears to be a thing of memories rather than of dreams; of bitter memories, too, and of despairing resignations. If people do not read it, one can only say, like the cook in “Ravenshoe,” that one “does not wonder at it.”

  “Villette” is full of scenes which one can trace to incidents which occurred during Miss Brontë’s visits to us. The scene at the theatre at Brussels in that book, and the description of the actress, were suggested by Rachel, whom we took her to see more than once. The scene of the fire comes from a slight incident to the scenery at Devonshire House, where Charles Dickens, Mr. Foster, and other men of letters gave a performance…. In “Villette” my mother was the original of “Mrs. Bretton;” several of her expressions are given verbatim. I myself, as I discovered, stood for “Dr. John.” Charlotte Brontë admitted this herself to Mrs. Gaskell, to whom she wrote: “I was kept waiting longer than usual for Mr. Smith’s opinion of the book, and I was rather uneasy, for I was afraid he had found me out, and was offended.”

General

  It seems to us, that the authoress of “Jane Eyre” combines all the natural and incidental attributes of the novelist of her day. In the ecclesiastical tendencies of her education and habits—in the youthful ambiguity of her politics—in a certain old-world air, which hangs about her pictures, we see her passports into circles which otherwise she would never reach. Into them she is carrying, unperceived, the elements of infallible disruption and revolution. In the specialties of her religious belief, her own self-grown and glorious heterodoxies—in the keen satiric faculty she has shown—in the exuberant and multiform vigour of her idiosyncrasy—in her unmistakable hatred of oppression, and determination to be free—in the onward tendencies of a genius so indisputably original, and in the reaction of a time on which, if she lives, she cannot fail to act strongly, we acknowledge the best pledge that the passport, already torn, will be one day scattered to the winds.

  To think of your asking such a question as “Do I care about Charlotte Brontë”! As if I did not care everything I am capable of caring for anything! As if Levi and I hadn’t read her books with rapture, and hadn’t looked forward to the publishing of Mrs. Gaskell’s book about her as one of the most interesting things that could happen; as if we didn’t lament her loss to the world every year of our lives!

  The circulation of Charlotte Brontë’s novels has always been large, and grows larger and larger every year.

  Charlotte Brontë was all genius and ignorance.

  In proportion to her means of cultivation, is about the most remarkable of recent literary phenomena.

  One of the greatest among women…. Some portion of a faculty such as this, some touch of the same god-like and wonder-working might of imperious moral quality, some flush of the same divine and plenary inspiration, there was likewise in the noble genius and heroic instinct of Charlotte Brontë. Some part of the power denied to many a writer of more keen and rare intelligence than even hers we feel “to the finest fibre of our nature” at the slight, strong touch of her magnetic hand.

  It is seldom that the critic has so enticing a bit of work cut out for him as is afforded by the Brontë literature, and in particular by Charlotte Brontë. The mysterious thing called genius, of which critics ought to feel themselves the humble ministers and hierophants, has not often lent himself so kindly to scientific inquisition. The celestial spark, the immortal germ, can in this instance be traced in its origin, followed in its development, estimated in its fruits.

  Say that two foreigners have passed through Staffordshire, leaving us their reports of what they have seen. The first, going by day, will tell us of the hideous blackness of the country, but yet more, no doubt, of that awful, patient struggle of man with fire and darkness, of the grim courage of those unknown lives; and he would see what they toil for, women with little children in their arms; and he would notice the blue sky beyond the smoke, doubly precious for such horrible environment. But the second traveller has journeyed through the night; neither squalor nor ugliness, neither sky nor children, has he seen, only a vast stretch of blackness shot through with flaming fires, or here and there burned to a dull red by heated furnaces; and before these, strange toilers, half naked, scarcely human, and red in the leaping flicker and gleam of the fire. The meaning of their work he could not see, but a fearful and impressive phantasmagoria of flame and blackness and fiery energies at work in the encompassing night. So differently did the black country of this world appear to Charlotte, clear-seeing and compassionate, and to Emily Brontë, a traveller through the shadows.

  Turning to the Brontës, does not one feel the very heartbeats of womanhood in those powerful utterances that seem to spring from some central emotional energy?

  Charlotte Brontë probably never realized what a serious thing it is to be a poet, or even to write poetry. She regarded poetry as a mode of expressing herself always quite open to her whenever she chose to give it the preference over prose. Her verses therefore are articles of manufacture, the poetry of commerce, and must be classed accordingly. They are certainly made of good materials—sound sense, fortitude, and affection. Occasionally a friendly reader will discern traces of a happier mood, when she ceases to be a manufacturer, and almost becomes a singer.

  The lady who writes has a headache, and feels internally wretched. She is “conducting herself very creditably, considering;” but her dark brow shows how limited is the life she looks out upon, and how a passionate heart eager for love and happiness beats itself against the wires of her little world. When society is better or worse than it is to-day, when governesses no longer exist, these tales will tell people what life looked like to governesses. In them we are always at the governess’s point of view. A young lady who is a guest and not a guest, a servant and not a servant, poor and clever among the dull and rich, is watching them, despising them, detesting them, and taking her proud, envious notes of them and their ways…. Now here was a modern prophetess, as it were, a fierce Yorkshire Deborah, with clear, forbidding, condemning eyes—here was a heart almost never out of pain. It is cruel and touching, the picture of Miss Brontë studying the reviews of her books, “in hopes of extracting precept and advice from which to profit.” There is uncommonly little gold in all the sands of the reviews, even when the critic, like Mr. G. H. Lewes, has himself written what he takes for a romance.

  Not until the greatest of women romancers arose in Charlotte Brontë was passion represented as it could only have been conceived by a woman.

  Charlotte Brontë had, in the highest degree, that which Ruskin had called the “pathetic fallacy,” the eye which beholds Nature coloured by the light of the inner soul. In this quality she really reaches the level of fine poetry. Her intense sympathy with her native moors and glens is akin to that of Wordsworth. She almost never attempts to describe any scenery with which she is not deeply familiar. But how wonderfully she catches the tone of her own moorland, skies, storm-winds, secluded hall or cottage…. Charlotte Brontë is great in clouds, like a prose Shelley…. Charlotte Brontë painted not the world, hardly a corner of the world, but the very soul of one proud and loving girl. That is enough; we need ask no more. It was done with consummate power. We feel that we know her life, from ill-used childhood to her proud matronhood; we know her home, her school, her professional duties, her loves and hates, her agonies and her joys, with that intense familiarity and certainty of vision with which our own personal memories are graven on our brain.

  The first of women-writers of every age.

  Charlotte Brontë was likewise deficient in humour. This might be safely inferred from her works, where there are hardly any humourous characters or situations; and the inference would be confirmed by her life. Her letters, often excellent for their common sense and their high standard of duty, and sometimes for their dignity, are almost destitute of playfulness. Neither does she seem to have readily recognized humour in others. She admired Thackeray above almost all men of her time, but she was completely puzzled by him when they met. She lectured him on his faults and quaintly adds that his excuses made them worse. The humourist was playing with too serious a mind. Had Miss Brontë been as Irish in nature as she was by blood she would not have made this mistake.

  The pain of unrequited affection is the feeling she never tires of depicting, and in describing this she has no equal. Her novels may end happily, but not till they have been made the medium of exhibiting the suffering which the master passion brings with it when unaccompanied by hope. Nowhere else are to be found such piercing cries of lonely anguish as may be heard in “Shirley” and “Villette.” They are the very de profundis of love sunk in the abyss of despair. And their author insists throughout how much greater this suffering must be for women than for men, both because they are doomed to bear in silence, and because they have not the distraction of an active career.

  Her style has none of the sharp falsetto note that might be expected from a woman in a passion; in spite of her fondness for melodramatic incident, Miss Brontë bridles her tongue and speaks with a terseness, a precision of phrase, and a reticence that might well serve as models for such modern masters of sensational fiction as Hall Caine. Charlotte Brontë is in very truth an imaginative artist in prose. She is loyal to the traditions of the best English literature. She has a delicate sense of the worth of words and of the possible beauty of sentences and of the charm of the carefully-wrought paragraph. And this instinct for style is one more reason—and a prepotent one—why her novels are not going to be speedily swept into the dust-bins like the thousand and one novels of the “lady novelists” of to-day,—improvisers all, ready and slovenly reporters of personal anecdote “femmes qui parlent.”

  In one direction Miss Brontë’s experience was adequate, namely, in her contact with nature. From her books one comes to know how largely in her life the clouds, the ragged hills, the wide spaces of the Yorkshire moors under sunset or moonlight, made up for the inadequacy of human society and interests. It is true, she has the Gothic trick of setting off her incidents by a sympathetic background; but in a deeper fashion than this she makes nature enter into the warp and woof of her stories through the part which it plays in the most essential elements in them, the inner life of her heroines.